


The Spaces In-Between

by Lauralot



Series: What We Tried So Hard to Hide Away [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Brain Damage, Disability, Epilepsy, Gen, HYDRA Trash Party, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Incontinence, Medical Horror, Medical Procedures, Seizures, Torture, Wetting, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8672563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: "Memories are like buckets of water: they weigh on the heart and the brain until the body fails. You're blessed to stay forgetful and young, Soldier." Sometimes blessings feel like curses.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story written for the HYDRA Trash Book, and it's been a blast and a privilege to get to take part in shaping the book. Seeing everyone else's brilliant work has been great. Be sure to check out the rest of this collection!

They are thirty meters from the base when the Soldier shoves a fistful of snow down Mitya’s coat.

Mitya’s lips, pink with cold, fall open in a wordless cry as the snow slips down his shirt front. The Soldier dodges his attempted tackle, leaving Mitya to collapse face-first in the snowdrift. While the Soldier is giggling, Mitya drives a boot heel into his knee, forcing him to the ground as well. There is snow thrown into the Soldier’s face, stinging and blinding, but he is still laughing and now Mitya is too.

Nearly an hour later, when the sky has darkened from pink to deep blue, they cross those thirty meters, noses red and skin tingling.

General Shevtsov is not pleased with their horseplay, but the expedition was a success. Besides, there are shchi and pelmeni waiting at the table, mostly warm still. The Soldier cannot care what the General thinks when there is food. Pasha and Matyash’s plates are already empty though a different hunger lights their eyes. They wanted to play in the snow, the Soldier thinks, wanted to come on the mission instead of scrubbing the floors. He can’t tell what Sasha is thinking. He doesn’t much care either.

“I’ll catch my death,” says Mitya, stripping off his coat. His damp blond hair hangs limp around his face. “You’ll be sorry then, Soldatik. You’ll mourn me.”

The Soldier wipes shchi from his lips. “I’ll die myself of shock at the sudden silence.”

“Let’s hope it happens before the rest of us deafen ourselves to be spared your inanity.” General Shevtsov rolls his eyes. “Gregovich. The instant the Soldat finishes, bring him in for the debriefing.”

“Sir.” Mitya nods.

Then the General is leaving. The Soldier watches his retreat. “He was not always so fat.”

Pasha tries to stifle his laughter, but his struggles only serve to amplify it.

“Come on,” says Mitya, pushing his chair back as the Soldier chews on the last of the pelmeni. “The sooner this is through, the sooner you can rest.”

Not tired in the least, the Soldier frowns as he allows himself to be led. He’d much rather drag Mitya back to the snow and continue their battle through the night. But he can imagine the punishment that would follow. And he does want the party to succeed, though the General could stand to smile more. Or even once.

Mitya sits him down on the examination chair, and the doctor hands him the cup of the sedatives and muscle relaxants that always accompany the debriefing. The Soldier swallows them dry, half-listening to the General’s demand for a report.

He straightens, speaks. “We arrived at the vantage point this morning, approximately—”

The Soldier is vomiting.

He is drenched in slush, rivulets of fluid running off his limbs to splatter on the floor. There’s more of the liquid coating his throat, his lungs, and his body is wracked with tremors, trying to warm itself, trying to force the cold out. He vomits again. Someone holds a basin beneath his chin. The fluid tastes like acid and ice.

He’s naked, huddled on the floor. He is not meant to be here. He should be delivering his report to the General. He _was_ delivering his report to the General. The Soldier tries to stand, but his legs will not respond. He attempts to speak and can only retch.

The Soldier is not sure how long it takes for his shaking to stop. Somebody kneels beside him, kissing one of the Soldier’s cheekbones and then the other.

“Here, Soldatik.” A towel drapes across his shoulders. “Don’t worry, they don’t expect you to go out today.”

He looks up through his dripping hair. The voice is familiar, the face uncanny. The Soldier thinks this is Mitya—he _sounds_ like Mitya—but Mitya’s hair isn’t so thin. His face only has lines at the corner of his eyes, and just when he laughs, not across his forehead and all the time.

“M-M-Mitya?”

“Come on,” says Maybe Mitya. “We’ll get you warmed up.” He helps the Soldier to stand, dries his hair. Maybe Mitya says there’s clothing and hot soup waiting. He says nothing about the unfinished report, so the Soldier doesn’t ask.

Maybe Mitya leads him back to the kitchen, sits him at the table. A woman the Soldier doesn’t know sets a steaming bowl of borscht before him. The scent of pelmeni no longer lingers in the air.

“Eat, Soldatik,” Maybe Mitya says, so the Soldier does.

He is halfway through the bowl when the General enters, broad as ever. But he had some hair on his head moments ago, and now he has none. “Gregovich. Status?”

Mitya—it _is_ Mitya—does not take his eyes from the Soldier as he speaks, smiling fondly. “He’s recovering well. He can always keep liquid down on the first day.”

But it isn’t the Soldier’s first day of operation. It’s his last day. Isn’t it?

Mitya must sense his distress. After the General leaves, he pulls his chair closer to the Soldier’s, taking a wooden figurine from his pocket. It has the form of a woman, torso painted pink with matching tulle around her hips. Mitya stands the doll on the table, pressing a key to her back. A few winds, and the doll dances across the tabletop.

The Soldier stares. The doll nearly tips herself into his bowl before he turns her. “Why do you have a doll?” Mitya likes physical games, sports and play battles. Not toys.

“A gift for my daughter,” says Mitya. “For her birthday.”

“You have a daughter?” Mitya doesn’t even have a _woman_ ; only two missions ago, he’d become very drunk and lamented this loudly. The Soldier recognizes the joke, laughs, but Mitya only gives him a smile the Soldier can’t read.

“You slept so long, Soldatik.”

Has he?

“Come.” Mitya scoops the doll into his hands as she winds down, standing. “Wouldn’t you like some fresh air?”

“Another snow fight?” the Soldier asks.

“If you manage to find snow in the summer.”

They settle beneath a tree. The day is warm but not stifling, a breeze rustling through the grass.

The Soldier feels a chill the sun does not diminish.

“Mitya.” If he tells the General, he’ll be made to sit this mission out. If he tells the doctor, he’ll be examined and prodded. The Soldier thinks it will hurt. He cannot remember pain from the doctor, but his stomach is never settled when he thinks of him. Mitya, though, will listen, maybe even understand. It’s safe to tell Mitya here. The walls only have ears inside. “There’s something not right. In me.”

“Ah?” There are nezabudka plants around the base of the tree, and Mitya begins to pick the flowers. “So what have you finally noticed? Your lack of humor or your tin arm?”

“My arm is steel.” And highly advanced. The Director always says so. “You said I’ve slept so long. I can’t remember going to bed.” He never remembers being put to bed now that he strains his mind. He’s not even sure where he sleeps, beyond that it’s cold. Perhaps in the cellar? He cannot remember waking up either. He was in the chair and then—where did he wake? Not in the kitchen, he doesn’t think. His hair is damp; was he in a bath? “I can’t even remember giving the General my report.”

“Of course you gave the report.” Mitya’s hands are full of stems dotted with tiny blue flowers. “I heard it all. A very good report—Shevtsov had no complaints. You didn’t even mention the ale, just as I asked you.”

“But I can’t remember it. I never can. I know I forget mission details.” It’s necessary, they say, because the Soldier is so valuable. They can’t risk their information falling into the wrong hands if he’s taken captive. “But why must I forget that? Why must I sleep for so long? I missed your daughter, your happiness. Everything.”

Mitya is looking right at him now. His hands, which had been winding the stems around each other, lie still in his lap. He gives another strange smile and though his gaze is on the Soldier, he seems to be seeing something far away.

“Soldatik,” Mitya says finally. “Do you know why creatures die?”

“Because we kill them.” Whether by a bullet to a target’s brain or a knife across a goat’s throat, he cannot remember the last time he witnessed a death that didn’t come at his hands or those of his brethren. None of his team ever die on his missions. The Soldier is with them, so why would they?

Mitya shakes his head. “The ones that aren’t slaughtered. How do they die?”

“They become old.”

Twisting the stems again, Mitya nods. “Yes, that’s true. But the trees are old, aren’t they? The earth and the water. They don’t die. What makes them different?”

The Soldier shrugs. There are so many differences between a goat and an ocean that he isn’t sure where to begin.

“A tree has no memory.” Mitya holds up the nezabudka chain. “These flowers? They weren’t thinking even before I plucked them, you see? Memories are like the buckets of water we carry from the stream, but you can never set them down. You only gain more and more, and they weigh on the heart and the brain until the body fails. This is true for all creatures with minds save for you, Soldatik. You’re blessed to stay forgetful and young. If the rest of us could be so lucky...” Mitya wraps the ends of the chain together, placing the loop of flowers on the Soldier’s head.

“Why can’t you?” Wouldn’t it be better if they were all young, only used when needed? The General and some others would need to stay awake to make plans, but why should the rest of them grow older? Why let their soldiers die?

“Our bodies aren’t as strong as yours. We couldn’t survive the process.” Mitya shakes his head, smiling. “But when you help us make a better world, maybe everyone can be like you, eh? Let’s hope I’m there to see it.”

“I don’t like forgetting.” It’s such an ungrateful thing to say, but he _doesn’t_. Not the times with Mitya and Pasha and the others.

“I’ll remember for you,” says Mitya, clasping his hand. “Don’t worry yourself.”

“Do you see me when I sleep?”

“Soldatik.” Mitya jostles his shoulder. “I tuck you in.”

The Soldier imagines it. Sometimes Mitya does that on missions. “How do I look then?”

“Peaceful.” Mitya wipes his hands on his trousers. “Perfect. Come, let us greet the others.”

“Are Pasha and Matyash sent into the field now?”

Mitya frowns. “Don’t mention Pasha to Matyash, Soldatik.”

The Soldier doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t need to understand to obey. Sasha has grown a mustache and beard. Matyash has a scar tugging at his lip. That night, Mitya leads the Soldier to a smooth, heavy stone in the back field, and then the Soldier comprehends. Taking the flowers from his head, he sets them on the rock. He does not say goodbye because Pasha cannot hear.

The mission takes a week. The next week, Sasha is called General Lukin and Mitya is dead. The Soldier cannot remember who puts him to bed in Mitya’s place. When he next wakes, there is a new base, new faces. Commander Karpov. Foma Domnin. Nikita Isayev. He is with them for a few days.

By the end of the month, the Soldier is shipped to America.

*

He isn’t sure how long he’s been with HYDRA when it begins.

Time is slippery in America. It runs through the Soldier’s fingers like the egg whites when Sveta tried to teach him to bake. He struggles to remember Sveta’s face, but all he can bring to mind is an impression of dark hair, softness, middle age. HYDRA must plan to use the Soldier for some time because their sleep takes so many more memories. The Soldier knows faces, important names, fleeting moments from missions. Nothing more. He isn’t sure how many missions he’s completed for the Americans. Sometimes it feels as though he’s been here for a day. Surely it must be at least a week.

He can’t remember how many targets he eliminated for the Soviets now either. He thinks he remembers they had nice soup.

It starts on a plane to Kuwait. The Soldier is examining his rifle to ensure it won’t jam, but then his hand is at his face rather than adjusting the stock. The Commander is before him though he wasn’t a second ago, his fingers around the Soldier’s wrist.

“Don’t remove your mask.”

The Soldier nods. He has no memory of trying to remove the mask, but it is not his place to question the Commander. He has little memory of wearing a mask before and doubts he did in Russia. If he strains his mind, he can see a boy in a thick coat—Mitya?—with layers of scarf around his face that almost look like a mask. But none of this is relevant to his mission so the Soldier stops thinking about it.

The next time it happens, he is completing endurance tests. His handlers give him obstacles and record the time it takes him to complete them. Then they break a bone and have him run through again, and so on, until they have collected all the data they need. The Soldier has a broken wrist. He’s doing very well until the time comes to get out of the swimming pool. Clenching his left hand on the ground, the Soldier begins to push up.

Then there’s a sharp pain in his face, a new jolt of throbbing in his wrist. For a second, he doesn’t understand.

Then he sees the scientist’s shoe touching down to the floor.

The Soldier has been kicked. His right hand is at his face as if to wipe his nose. He can’t remember moving it. Nor can he understand where the scientist came from.

She’s shouting at him for ruining the test, for being uncooperative. As he pulls himself from the water, she lands another kick on his thigh. This one does not sting as much.

They make the Soldier start the course over. Again and again until he’s collapsed from exhaustion. Lying on the floor, aching everywhere, he only sees that shoe settling. How can he have been so bad without remembering? How can he forget without sleep?

It becomes more frequent. At least, he thinks it does. It’s difficult to track an anomaly when he retains so few memories. But he thinks he recalls the aftermath of these lapses. A handler barking at him to keep moving. The Director’s hand striking his face after he’s paused during a mission report. Once it happened during a briefing. He’d lost track of the information being given and had to ask for clarification. They hadn’t liked that.

But that displeasure was nothing compared to the time he lapsed on a mission.

That incident, the Soldier recalls with perfect clarity. They wanted him to remember.

The tac-team was in Kyoto. The Soldier sat at a window for six hours, staring through his scope at the consulate building across the street. His shoulders and neck were stiff from maintaining his position. His stomach felt demandingly empty, and his bladder ached for release. It didn’t matter. Only the target mattered, and the Soldier was to shoot her the second she came through the doors. The briefing hadn’t disclosed when that would be.

So he sat, watching the door and recalculating his shot with each shift of the breeze. A rustle in the trees. Recalculate. A leaf skittering over the pavement. Recalculate. A stillness in the air. Recalculate.

Then he wasn’t recalculating because a hand was yanking his hair, banging his head against the window frame.

The wind had changed. His left hand was off the rifle, fingers brushing at his nose, and as he collided with the frame his wrist was pinned between his cheek and the wood, the plates of the joint pushed up by the rim of the mask.

The Soldier’s head ached, not aided by his Commander’s voice, harsh in his ear, hissing at him to make the shot. The wind had changed and heat coursed down his legs, splashing onto the floor.

The target was _outside_.

Not just outside and stepping out of the building, but almost at the sidewalk and at least five seconds past the point when the Soldier should have splattered her brains across the door. He jerked his head, swinging his left arm to dislodge the Commander and allow him to aim— _recalculate she’s moving idiot you missed the shot stupid worthless recalculate_ —squeezing the trigger.

His calculations were panicked, sloppy. The bullet missed its mark by a quarter of a meter, blasting a section of the consulate’s brick wall into dust. Another shot before the target could run, and bloody brain matter erupted from the back of her skull.

Trembling, wide-eyed, the Soldier sat and stared. Not at the body but the ruined brick. His heart raced rabbit-fast, more of an overwhelming howl in his ears than a beat. Urine was cooling on his legs, the Commander’s hand like a vice at his throat, but the Soldier barely felt it. His senses were dulled by the overload of activity in his suddenly disordered mind.

— _Bad worthless failure stupid ruined everything useless failure they’ll throw you away_ —

They left him in the soiled clothing, his thighs itching and burning for the duration of the transport back. He didn’t complain. He deserved it.

At the base they cuffed his wrists behind his back and lifted him in such a way that forced the right shoulder from its socket and tore the skin around the left. He maintained that position through the beatings.

The sleep left the memory of each bruise and laceration wholly untouched. They wanted him to remember.

Sometimes the Soldier thinks, _I should tell someone_.

Aren’t the lapses a malfunction? His superiors respond as though they are. He is admonished or punished for them depending on their severity. The doctors are here to repair malfunctions. The prospect of another lapse fouling a mission will no longer hang over his head if he tells.

But he’s seen piles of weaponry and machines labeled condemned, watched technicians break them down for scrap. And when he thinks of reporting the lapses, he feels as though those jagged, rusting metal fragments are stabbing his insides.

He can remember snow and wind in his eyes as he walked down a street. There were tall buildings all around and a small man at his side, a scarf wrapped around his face. There was blond hair sticking out below the man’s hat. Mitya, the Soldier supposes, though Mitya never seemed so small. But then, the Soldier has a poor memory.

“I don’t like forgetting,” the Soldier said, and Mitya responded with a low, rattling cough, so forceful it seemed too big for his body.

“You’re blessed to stay forgetful and young.” Mitya’s voice seemed too deep for his size as well, and why was he speaking English? “I’ll remember for you.”

The Soldier cannot place the memory. He recalls no area in Russia that matches the street, although perhaps they hadn’t been in Russia. Mitya had spoken English, after all. And the setting doesn’t matter so much, not compared to what Mitya said.

 _You’re blessed to stay forgetful and young_. He is meant to forget; he knows that. And the Soldier thinks maybe the Americans give him more missions than the Russians had, and so more things to forget. Possibly too many things to take away all at once. These lapses, then, are not malfunctions but a necessity. A programming to keep him ageless and useful even when the technicians are not around. The timing needs recalibration, but he is not broken. He will not be condemned.

“Fix me,” he asks the technicians at his next debriefing, and they assure him they will.

It seems that they have. Sometimes the Soldier misses a question or an order, lags behind when the team is moving, but there are no more missions failed due to lapses. He cannot recall any more punishments. The recalibration appears successful so the Soldier will not expend further worry on the situation unless it once again becomes an interference.

But he cannot help a twinge of fear when one mission requires parachuting. His mind seizes the thought that he could lapse at the wrong moment, fail to pull the ripcord. His lips move below the mask as the plane flies, mouthing the same strange words over and over: _Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die_. He doesn’t know where he learned the phrase. Each recitation makes his stomach sink further.

Still, he reaches the ground. They take a Jeep from the landing site, and the Soldier is suddenly weak in the knees with relief that no one has ever asked him to drive. His heart settles, and once more he puts the concerns behind him.

Until one day, a target says “Bucky.”

Until the Soldier loses himself in the vault, and only the Director’s backhand returns him to awareness.

Until he lapses standing on a bridge, facing a target he feels he should know— _Mitya_?—and by the time he returns to himself, a shield is hurtling toward him.

The target says words that, somehow, the Soldier knows are not Mitya’s. Yet just as innately, he knows he cannot let the target drown. It isn’t until he hauls the man to the shore that it occurs to the Soldier how furious HYDRA will be. How much the punishment will hurt.

Something within him says _Run_ , and the Soldier obeys. It’s all he knows to do.

At the Smithsonian, he learns that the target’s name is not Mitya Gregovich but Steven Rogers. He learns that his name was once Bucky Barnes and that he and Rogers were best friends.

Friends. The Soldier remains near the video of Rogers and Barnes for some time, trying to understand that word. Friends. After hours of reflection, he recalls a sunny day. Hands resting a wreath of flowers on his head. Mitya, he thinks. Was Mitya a friend as well as a comrade?

“Hey, buddy,” someone says in the Soldier’s ear, irritated. “You gonna stand here all day?”

The Soldier could snap this man’s neck before he could cry out. But there is a woman beside him, a child in her arms. And the Soldier does not want to harm him. And there are no orders. So he steps to the side.

It isn’t until dusk, when the museum is emptying and the Soldier must exit with the others, that the implications of the man’s words strike him.

 _You gonna stand here all day_?

The Soldier had been trying to avoid detection, careful not to linger too long in a single space, working to keep from showing his confusion. Until he remembered Mitya’s flowers, if it’s a real memory. Then he must have frozen, unmoving.

Like a lapse.

The Soldier sits on a street bench, face in his hands. His skin feels taut and thin as he tries to think. It’s so hard to remember—HYDRA must have been protecting very important information when last they put him to bed—but weren’t the lapses meant to take memories rather than to restore them?

 _This is true for all creatures with minds save for you, Soldatik_. Someone had said that. Steven Rogers? _You’re blessed to stay forgetful and young_.

The Soldier is no longer blessed. And why should he be? He failed his mission. Now the memories will return, pounding against his mind like raindrops, and he will wither and decay in the blink of an eye. He will never see Mitya again. He’ll never see Rogers.

His body is so heavy— _memories are like buckets of water_ —and the Soldier cannot help but shut his eyes.

When they open, a woman in a police uniform is standing over him. “Hey man,” the officer says. “You’re gonna have to move along. You can’t sleep here.”

Sleep. The Soldier _slept_. Years can pass when he sleeps; what if Rogers is dead? What if his dreams were memories and he’s now decades older?

The Soldier stares down at his hand. The skin is smooth, firm.

“Come on, buddy,” says the officer.

He snaps his head up. “What year is it?”

The officer only gives him a tight smile, shaking her head. “There’s a homeless shelter on First,” she says. “Do you want a lift?”

The Soldier does not answer. Several blocks away from the officer, he stops to dig through a trash can. There is a newspaper inside, damp and slimy from the refuse around it, but he can make out the date printed at the top. Yesterday’s paper. At least, what was yesterday for him, but surely the thin material would not withstand decades or even weeks within the garbage. The officer prevented him from sleeping for too long.

This time.

He thinks of the Smithsonian, of Rogers and Barnes smiling in the footage. Before he can sleep, he wants to see Rogers again. He _must_. The Smithsonian said that Rogers also slept unchanged for decades. He did it with ice. Perhaps he will teach the Soldier to do the same. But even beyond self-preservation, the Soldier _needs_ with an intensity he’s never known. He isn’t sure what he’s craving, but he knows he will die without it.

Is this how it feels to have a friend?

The Soldier doesn’t know. But he has a new memory: a window. An apartment. The eyes of Rogers staring up at him.

He turns toward the direction that he thinks leads to the apartment building and begins to walk.

*

When Rogers sees the Soldier in his kitchen, he drops a mug. Coffee splashes on the Soldier’s pants, dripping into his boots. The floor is covered in shards of ceramic, and the Soldier bends to gather them up, but Rogers tells him to stop. He says he doesn’t want the Soldier to cut himself.

The Soldier thinks it would be sensible for the person with a metal hand to do the cleaning, but he says nothing.

Rogers does not sweep up the mess either. Instead he steps around it, encircling the Soldier in his arms and drawing him close. The Soldier does not move, unsure of how to respond. He has never been hugged before. The Soldier has a vague memory of a blond man, of wrestling on snow in an embrace similar to a hug, but he stamps it down. Memories are dangerous. The hug is not unpleasant, and he doesn’t want to grow old and rot away before he can experience another.

“—missed you so much, Buck,” Rogers is saying. “I’m so sorry—if I had known—I looked for you, Bucky, I _did_ , but they must have already—then Monty was dragging me out of the snow—go back looking as soon as we stopped Schmidt, but Peggy—”

Despite the warmth of the embrace, the Soldier feels cold. He cannot tell if Rogers is incoherent from emotion or if the lapses are occurring more frequently now. He tries to steady his breathing. He wants to cling tighter to Rogers, but he won’t. It could be interpreted as a hostile action.

The man is still speaking. “—never let them touch you again, Bucky, I swear, if any of those bastards even looks at you, I’ll rip them into pieces—”

Rogers is offering to defend the Soldier’s life even though the Soldier is only a weapon. Even though the Soldier tried to kill him. The Soldier’s eyes are hot and wet, which makes no sense. He only cries when his eyes are irritated or when he is in severe pain or physical stress. He is none of those things now. Why should he cry at a hug when he didn’t even cry over Mitya’s death?

Mitya. Mitya died and the Soldier can _remember_ , and the tears will not stop. Perhaps this is a new defense mechanism for his body, forcing memories out through his eyes. But he can remember and his insides _ache_ and suddenly he’s shaking, choking out frantic sounds.

“What?” Rogers pulls back, brows drawn together. “Bucky, what’s wrong?”

The Soldier can only answer in strangled gasps that he eventually recognizes as words. “Don’t want to remember I don’t want to remember I don’t want to I don’t _want_ —”

Rogers guides the Soldier around the shattered mug. He makes the Soldier sit at the table and rubs his warm hands up and down the Soldier’s back. “It’s all right, Buck,” he says. “None of this is your fault. It’ll be okay.”

The Soldier tries to believe him, but the tears don’t stop for a long time.

*

It’s hard to remember much of his life with HYDRA or Department X, but the Soldier believes he prefers life with Rogers most of all. He spends three days there and within those days, there are no missions. No endurance tests. No training beyond a run around the neighborhood, and that wasn’t even at top speed. At first it makes the Soldier tense and sick, waiting to be punished for not performing to his full potential, but Rogers tells him he’s doing very well.

Rogers tells him many things. He tells the Soldier to call him Steve. He tells the Soldier that he can eat as much as he wants and never accuses the Soldier of exaggerating his hunger. He tells the Soldier it’s all right if the Soldier is confused or frightened, or even angry. The Soldier has never been permitted to be angry before, not unless he directs it at a target.

Best of all, Steve tells him that they don’t have to talk about the past until the Soldier wants to. Says it’s up to him. And if they never talk about it, the Soldier won’t have to remember. Steve is thoughtful and kind. Everything is perfect.

The Soldier should have known that means things are too good to be true.

On the third day in Steve’s home, Steve is teaching the Soldier to make eggs over easy. He demonstrates one and then hands the spatula to the Soldier, scrubbing at his metal fingers with a disinfecting wipe once the Soldier cracks the egg into the skillet.

“Perfect,” Steve says as the egg sizzles. “You’ll know it’s ready to flip when—Bucky? Hey, Bucky?”

Steve is much closer now, waving his hand before the Soldier’s face. The air smells strongly of disinfectant, and the Soldier realizes this is because his metal fingers are rubbing at his nose.

Adrenaline courses through his stomach.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks, concern creasing his features. “You spaced out.”

“I’m fine,” the Soldier says, though the spatula is trembling in his grip. “I’m sorry, Steve, I—”

“It’s all right,” Steve says, placing his hand over the Soldier’s. “It’ll just be an over-medium egg instead. Here.” He guides the Soldier through the flip, and the yolk does not break. Steve grins, patting the Soldier on his shoulder, so the Soldier allows himself a smile.

“Hey,” Steve asks after they’re done cooking, forks scraping against their plates. “You can’t catch colds, can you? Does your serum allow for that?”

“I do not fall ill,” the Soldier says. Even if he could, such a weakness would not be allowed to interfere with missions. He’d endure.

“I figured,” Steve said. “You just wipe your nose a lot, is all.”

The next day, the Soldier tries to count his lapses. It’s hard because Steve does not notice every instance, and some of the lapses aren’t accompanied by his hand rubbing his nose. Sometimes he can’t tell if he’s lapsed or just become too confused to focus on Steve’s words. Steve says many things the Soldier doesn’t understand.

By the end of the day, the count is thirty. And that’s a low estimate.

The Soldier does not sleep that night. He hasn’t slept any night here, afraid of losing time, but his mind has never raced this way. The technicians were meant to have fixed this. Has their recalibration failed? The lapses must be increasing; how could he perform missions while experiencing so many? He needs repairs. He must tell Steve.

But what if he cannot be fixed and Steve rejects him? Worse, what if Steve keeps him around out of pity, always struggling to keep the sympathy or disdain from his eyes? What if the Soldier must go to bed to be repaired and Steve is old or gone when he wakes?

The Soldier resolves to keep silent. Steve says there are no more missions, so maybe the lapses don’t matter.

After the Soldier has spent a week with Steve—sleeping only once, when Steve swore to wake him after eight hours—a man comes to visit them. The man’s name is Sam Wilson. Steve told the Soldier about Wilson on his sixth day at the house.

“This is Sam,” Steve had said, pulling up a picture on his phone. “You met him once before.”

The Soldier stared, digging through his mind and resurfacing empty-handed. Wilson looked familiar, but something wasn’t right, as though he were missing a limb. “He is your friend?”

“He’s a great guy,” Steve said. “He used to be a pararescue, and then—”

The Soldier missed what followed, wiping his nose. Steve was looking at him expectantly so the Soldier guessed at what he wanted. “You would like us to meet?”

“Only if you want to. He’s nice, Bucky.”

Wilson’s name came up many times over the following days, so the Soldier agreed. Steve never pressed, but it was clear he enjoyed this man’s company. The Soldier could not deprive him of that.

Wilson says to call him Sam. He has a bright smile and soft but scrutinizing eyes. When they go out for lunch, Sam talks about how he became a pararescue, tells a story about a prank during his first parachute jump. Steve laughs.

A memory surfaces at the back of the Soldier’s mind. _Gory, gory, what a hell of—_

The Soldier shoves a handful of fries into his mouth, biting his tongue in the process. He feels Steve and Sam’s eyes on him, but their conversation does not stop. His face burns.

Sam doesn’t turn the discussion to the Soldier until they are waiting on the bill. The Soldier feels relieved rather than neglected. “So I hear you’re Steve’s new roommate,” he says. “Liking it so far?”

“I like staying with Steve,” the Soldier answers. “He is nice. He was my friend before, and he lets me try new things. He also gives me all the food I want.”

It’s a simple response, but when he starts his hands are on the table. Once he’s through, he’s rubbing his nose and the check is by Steve’s glass. Steve and Sam are looking at him strangely, but Sam only says, “Steve’s a generous guy like that. I don’t know how I’d afford feeding a super soldier.”

“It helps when your bank account’s been gathering interest since 1945,” Steve says.

It happens again on the way home. They’re walking and suddenly Sam grabs the Soldier’s arm, pulling him away from the curb as a car speeds by. It wasn’t there a moment ago; the Soldier looked before he started to cross.

“You doing okay?” Sam asks.

The Soldier nods, not trusting himself to speak. He doesn’t like the man’s look.

At home, they play Monopoly, which the Soldier is very good at, and then Apples to Apples, which the Soldier doesn’t understand. Steve makes popcorn and pours lemonade, and everyone settles on the couch to watch _Some Like It Hot_. Sam says it’s a classic.

It’s a good movie and the Soldier laughs a few times, but throughout the film, the lemonade and the water from the restaurant filter through him, making pressure low in his stomach. As soon as the movie ends, he stands, starting for the bathroom, but Steve asks, “Did you like it, Buck?” and it’s rude to answer with his back to them, so he faces the couch.

“I thought—” he begins, but then Sam and Steve’s expressions have changed, his hand is at his face, and urine is soaking through his pants, splashing on the floor. He can’t breathe, staring at the puddle growing beneath him.

The Soldier’s eyes sting with tears, face burning, as Steve scrambles up. “It’s not your fault—it’s okay, Bucky, get in the shower—I’ll clean it up.”

But the Soldier can only stand, paralyzed, cursing himself as Steve keeps telling him it’s all right. Nothing’s all right. The Soldier can’t move until Sam leads him to the shower.

He stands under cold water, a penance for humiliating Steve. From the living room, he hears voices.

“— _stressed_ , Sam, who wouldn’t be—”

“I’m telling you, the way his eyes fluttered, I’ve seen that before—”

“He had the serum too, he can’t—”

“You saw the files. No one could put up with decades of that chair unscathed.”

Chair? What chair? The Soldier’s sat on many chairs. In Steve’s kitchen, in the Director’s office, with Mitya and Matyash and Pasha at the base.

He towels himself off once the humiliation is rinsed away and dresses. His shameful mess is already cleaned up when he returns. Steve and Sam stare at him, eyes full of worry and something he can’t name.

The Soldier remembers that Mitya led him to a chair once for a debriefing. Maybe more than once.

“I’m sorry,” says the Soldier. “There is no excuse.”

“Buck, I’m not mad—”

“I don’t wanna embarrass you, but do you have episodes like that often?” Sam asks softly. Too softly. The Soldier could drown in his words. “I don’t mean accidents, necessarily. Do you zone out without meaning to? Lose time?”

“Are you a doctor?” the Soldier responds. Doctors used to examine him in that chair.

“No, but I know a few things about injuries and making people feel better.” Sam pats the couch beside him. He doesn’t smile, which somehow makes it better. “Can you sit down? I’d like to test something, just to put our minds at ease. It won’t hurt.”

The chair—he thinks the chair had hurt. He’d lie in it, shaking, soiling himself, waiting for Mitya to take him to bed. He still can’t remember his bed.

“Please, Bucky?” Steve says, eyes shining with worry, so the Soldier sits.

Sam holds a paper up in the air before him, asking him to take one hundred deep breaths and blow them onto the paper as fast as he can. It’s very easy. _Ten, eleven_. He can feel Steve’s eyes on him. _Twenty-three, twenty-four_. He’s not even feeling the effects of hyperventilation. _Forty-nine, fifty_.

The Soldier’s rhythm falters. Was that fifty or fifty-one? Why has he stopped breathing? He takes another breath, but Steve’s hand is on his shoulder. Steve’s hand is shaking.

“It’s okay.” But Steve’s eyes glisten. “You did good, Buck.”

“That’s what I mean,” Sam says. “That’s an absence seizure.”

Steve is trembling all over, hugging the Soldier so hard. “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice sounds like crying, face buried against the Soldier’s chest. “I’m so sorry, Bucky, I should have noticed, I—”

The Soldier is very still. He doesn’t understand. He did not have a seizure; he didn’t even fall. He says as much, but Sam shakes his head.

“When you lose a few seconds, that’s a kind of seizure,” Sam explains. “I don’t know if it was the fall or the chair, but some of the pathways in your brain aren’t working right, Bucky. When your brain tries to use those paths, it freezes up.”

The Director’s computer froze once; the Soldier saw him strike it. The Director has struck him in the past too. “I’m broken,” says the Soldier.

Steve sounds like he’s choking. “No. No, Bucky. You’re perfect.”

But perfect soldiers don’t have seizures. Mitya said forgetting was a blessing, so how can the Soldier’s mind react this way unless he’s damaged? Unworthy?

“This isn’t your fault.” Sam sounds so sure. “You couldn’t help being electrocuted.” 

“They were helping,” the Soldier whispers. Mitya gave him flowers, played in the snow. Once he took the Soldier dancing. He wouldn’t hurt him.

“We’ll help you,” Sam says, rubbing Steve’s back. The Soldier thinks he should be the one to do that, but his arms won’t respond. “There are medications for seizures, therapy dogs, all kinds of stuff. We’ll find something that works, something you’re comfortable with.”

When Steve stops sniffling, Sam coaxes the Soldier into visiting a hospital. The whole way there, Steve holds the Soldier’s hand. “It’ll be okay,” he promises as though his eyes aren’t red-rimmed. “Everything’s going to be okay, Buck.”

The Soldier nods, knowing it won’t be.

In the neurology ward, a nurse pulls back a curtain to reveal a reclining chair and asks the Soldier to sit. He remembers the pain. He will not cry.

Steve holds his hand as he settles down while the nurses begin attaching electrodes to his scalp. To measure brainwave activity, they say. The Soldier can remember the lightning behind his eyes now, the burning. Surely they’ll make Steve let go before that. He doesn’t want Steve to hurt too. But for now, Steve is smiling down at him, and the Soldier forces his mouth to smile back.

The Soldier hopes the bed after this chair will be comfortable. He hopes Steve will be alive when he wakes.

**Author's Note:**

> Soldatik is a diminutive for Soldat, the Russian word for Soldier.
> 
> Shchi is [cabbage soup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shchi), and [pelmeni](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelmeni) are dumplings.
> 
> Nezabudka is the Russian name for the flower known as a [forget-me-not.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myosotis)
> 
> [Absence seizures](http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-seizures/absence-seizures) can last from a few seconds to about twenty seconds, in duration, and can be accompanied by eye fluttering, lip-smacking, or repetitive hand motions. In this fic, Bucky's automatic face-rubbing was inspired by the seizures displayed in [this video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HiKwTm755o) While incontinence does not always accompany absence seizures, [it can occur](http://www.epilepsy.com/connect/forums/living-epilepsy-adults/absence-seizures-urinary-incontinence), particularly if person needed to go badly before the seizure.
> 
> [The paper test](http://www.cosderm.com/fileadmin/content_pdf/ped/archive_pdf/vol42iss8/70368_main.pdf) can be used to [induce an absence seizure.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obbg1BFt26Q)
> 
> The words that Bucky remembers in regards to parachuting are lyrics from [Blood on the Risers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWgsdexkv18), an American paratrooper song from WWII. 
> 
> Absence seizures can be diagnosed by [an EEG test.](http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/petit-mal-seizure/basics/tests-diagnosis/con-20021252)


End file.
